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173. XV. THAT THE WIFE THUS RECEIVES INTO HERSELF THE IMAGE OF HER HUSBAND, AND HENCE PERCEIVES, SEES, AND FEELS HIS AFFECTIONS. From the reasons adduced above, it follows as an attested truth that wives receive into themselves the things pertaining to the wisdom of their husbands, thus the properties of their souls and minds, and so, from being virgins, make themselves wives. The causes from which this follows are: 1. That woman was created from man. 2. That in her there is thus an inclination to unite and, as it were, reunite herself with man. 3. That from this union with her fellow pair and for the sake of it, woman is born the love of man, and by marriage becomes more and more the love of him inasmuch as her love is continually devoting its thoughts to the conjoining of the man to herself. 4. That she is conjoined to her only one by applications to the desires of his life. 5. That they are conjoined by the spheres encompassing them and uniting the one with the other, both universally and as to every single part, according to the nature of the conjugial love with the wives, and according also to the nature of the recipient wisdom with the husbands. 6. That they are conjoined also by the appropriation by wives of the virile forces of their husbands. 7. From which appropriation, it is clear that something of the husband is continually being transcribed into the wife and is inscribed upon her as her own. From all this it follows, that an image of the husband is being formed in the wife, and from this image, the wife perceives, sees, and feels within herself the things which are in her husband, and thence, as it were, herself in him. She perceives from the communication, sees from the aspect, and feels from the touch. That from the touch, she feels the reception of her love by her husband in the palms of his hands, on his cheeks, arms, hands, and breasts, was disclosed to me by the three wives in the hall and the seven wives in the rose garden spoken of in the Memorable Relations [nos. 156e, 208, 293-4].